


to dash against darkness

by endlesshorizons



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe, Bullying, Depression, Drug Use, Homophobia, Kidlock, M/M, Magical Realism, Mental Health Issues, PTSD Sherlock, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reichenbach-Related, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Teenlock, Trigger Warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 17:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2660594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endlesshorizons/pseuds/endlesshorizons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lights are turned off where John is standing, and another door is half open with light flooding out of it. Despite the abysmal state of the flat, John feels a rush of warmth from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. More than anywhere he had lived growing up, more than his dorm room at university or the flat where he had spent the last four years, it feels like coming home. All at once and with conviction, John comes to understand a single fact, one that he has been ducking around for years: Sherlock Holmes is his soulmate. He belongs here, and tomorrow, he will come on his own two feet so that he will be able to <i>stay.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	to dash against darkness

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [a beautiful poem](http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1595/i-will-wade-out/) by E. E. Cummings, the beginning of which I'm planning to get as a tattoo.
> 
> I'm not sure if it was a good idea or a really dumb one to stay up until 5:30 am finishing this thing...
> 
> Please heed the trigger warnings in the tags.

The first time, John is twelve years old. He is sitting on his new bed, looking around at the blank walls of the worn-down bedroom that is illuminated by too-bright yellow light seeping in through the small window. The blinding rays land on the beat-up cardboard boxes lying on the wooden floor, a few books and shirts peeking out from beneath the flaps where the heavy duty tape has been hastily sliced open.

It's almost 1200 hours, and soon his mother will be calling the family down for lunch. He knows he should be unpacking, but just the thought of it exhausts him. He wants to lie back on his bed and burrow under the covers. If he closes his eyes and imagines hard enough, he can pretend that he doesn't hear his older sister's cheerful, tone-deaf singing from the next room; that his father isn't stomping up and down the stairs, shouting out curt demands and inquiries as if he is marching through a battlefield instead of their substandard, army-provided house on base. Just maybe, he will close his eyes and open them again to the greyish glow of a Welsh twilight with the posters and knickknacks that have managed to collect and find homes on the walls and dusty nooks of his old bedroom. That any moment now, Danny and Ken will be knocking on the front door, hollering at him to come out already and join in on the rugby game.

Instead, when John grudgingly rolls over and cracks open his eyes, the Albertan sunlight is shining as harshly as ever on the emptiness of his new life. It was too good to be true, John tells himself, thinking of the past two and a half years in their comfortable little suburban house with sky blue windowsills and pots of daffodils growing in a row in the front lawn. He had desperately clung to the hope that they might finally settle down, that somehow, his father wouldn't be transferred again. That he would grow up with people he knew for more than a year or so, that he wouldn't always be the "new kid" and would have a place he could call home. Instead, his father's new assignment is sending them farther away than ever, to this tiny collection of buildings on the other side of the Atlantic, with nothing but flat grassland to remind him of his dull, isolated misery.

John stares up at the ceiling and thinks. He thinks of dragging himself out of bed in five minutes and going down to lunch, sitting sullenly at the old, stained wooden table as Mum and Dad snipe at each other and Harry prattle on even though no one is listening. It's not fair, he thinks. Harry never seems to have much trouble when they move to a new place, and neither had most of the military children he had met. They all seem to have the ability to slide easily into new environments, quickly making friends and getting along with the local kids as if they had known them all their lives. Meanwhile, John seems to have perfected the role of a sore thumb, sticking out wherever he goes, standing awkwardly on the sidelines and watching the world move around him. Tomorrow will be another of those days, another meaningless beginning when he will step into a clustered, run-down classroom to a group of foreign, evaluating eyes.

Turning his head, John sees the pair of scissors sitting on the squarish nightstand, having recently completed its duty of cutting open boxes and double-knotted plastic bags. Suddenly, a thought occurs to John, an image flashing through his head, clear and vivid. He imagines lifting the rubber handle and sharp blades, and instead of setting it tip-down into the pencil holder where it belongs, bringing it to his own chest. He can hear the sound of his heart as it goes about its tireless task, every pump a crash of thunder in his ears. He thinks about bright red liquid flowing out of a wound like he had seen on the telly, squirting and gushing and free.

John does not think of himself as a morbid person by any means, but he can't help but be captivated by the picture in his mind, imagining the stark contrast of colour on his white t-shirt. The idea terrifies him, but at the same time, he feels a triumphant lift in his chest, as if he was an ostrich that has suddenly taken flight. The feeling, he realises, is one of _power_. He feels like he is his own person, that he can do something by himself, for himself, that is separate from the push and pull that Dad and Mum and Harry have exerted on him for his entire life. That he can _choose_ , and he can choose to be free of this life that he doesn't want.

Later, he will think back to the incident and be horrified at how little hesitation he feels in that moment. There is no attack of panic or grip of fear, not even a jump at the shock of the cool metal against his burning skin. He plunges the blade into his chest almost casually, the way that one would brush their teeth or lock the door, and is overwhelmed as a pain greater than any he had ever imagined crashes over him.

 

When John wakes, he finds that he is lying on the freshly-cut grass of a fenced backyard. The air is pleasantly warm, without the almost painful prickling where sun touches skin John had cringed at when they first stepped out of Calgary International Airport. A light breeze passes through, causing the grass to sway languidly and picking up the fringe on John's forehead which he perpetually tries - and fails - to keep out of his eyes.

For a few shocked moments, John wonders if this is heaven. He decides that, if he were to choose what paradise looks like, he might have settled on something similar. Just then, a boy's head, still a bit chubby from baby fat and plastered with tangled black curls, extends itself into his field of vision.

"Who are you?" the boy asks suspiciously, narrowing his eyes, "and how did you get here?"

John blinks and sits up abruptly, nearly knocking into the other boy. He stares at the figure before him - a skinny boy, younger than he is, dressed in dirt-plastered shirt and shorts with a skinned kneecap and crossing his arms in a strangely mature way.

"You weren't here when I looked over a minute ago, and I would've heard if you opened the gate or climbed over the fence," the boy says, then leans closer. "And you have a bit of tape on your hand and cardboard shavings in your hair. You weren't exactly climbing a tree or playing football."

"Uh," John replies, ever so eloquently. "Where am I?"

The boy rolls his eyes. "My backyard," he enunciates.

"Am I in England?"

"Yes, where else would you be?" the boy replies with a roll of his eyes. Then, his eyes suddenly light up as if he has discovered an amazing thing and pushes in close, coming right up to John's face. "You mean you weren't in England, then suddenly you were? Did you get teleported here? Do you have a transporter? Are you from the future?"

"Woah, uh," John says, backing away a little. "No, no, I don't think so. I just -"

John cuts himself off abruptly, remembering that suicide is really not an appropriate topic for a kid who looks about ten years old.

"I was, uh, in my room, and then I just ended up here."

The boy's eyes widen. "You didn't do anything?"

"Well...not really."

"So, just like that," he snaps his finger, "and you showed up here?"

John nods.

"What were you doing? Did you touch something? What were you thinking of?"

John swallows. "I was unpacking. We just moved. And um, I was unpacking, and I was feeling a bit sad, I suppose, and then it just happened."

The boy frowns dramatically, eyebrows scrunching and almost meeting in the middle of his forehead. "There has to be something unusual," he insists. "Where did you come from?"

"CFB Suffield. It's a military base in Canada."

"Hm. Well, if we can't know what happened in Suffield, then we have to start here," the boy says, crouching down to the ground where John had been laying and where the grass is still bent from being crushed beneath him, and nudges John to get out of the way.

"Wait, start here? With what? What are you doing?"

"Finding out why, obviously," the boy replies with a huff, looking impatient. "There must be something special about this place. Why would you be sent here?"

John stands dumbfounded for a few moments as he watches the smaller boy prod and dig at the ground with fervour, squinting at blades of grass and rubbing bits of soil between his fingertips.

"Well?" he asks, looking up at John, "aren't you going to help?" As John kneels down beside him, the boy turns to look at John with a grin and says, "my name's Sherlock Holmes, by the way."

 

John spends several hours with Sherlock. They don't make any headway on finding out why John was transported to the Holmes' backyard, but a fair amount of dirt and grass are thrown at faces and down already-grimy shirts, and there is enough giggling that Sherlock's father pokes his head out to see what is going on. He has a nice, gentle voice and smiles when he is introduced to John, who "is doing a project" with Sherlock. Unlike his own father would have, Mr. Holmes doesn't tell them to be quiet or order them to get back to work. By the time that John finds his vision going hazy as they sit in an exhausted but content silence under the shade of the big oak tree in the backyard, the image of glistening red fluid welling under a silvery blade has long lost its appeal. He wakes up to find himself lying on his bed, bare minutes after he had left. He wonders if he had dreamt up the strange boy with the undefinable blue-green-gold eyes, before his mother's voice rings out in the house to announce that it is time for lunch.

 

John slams the door to Harry's flat and runs down the staircase. Through the clanging of his footsteps, he can still hear Harry shouting obscenities at his back.

"And don't come back, you little fucker!" she screams. The neighbours will hear, John knows, but he can't bring himself to care right now. All he is concentrated on is getting as far away as possible.

John finally slows when he hits the pavement, panting from the exertion and the panic still thundering away in his chest. He takes deep breaths, trying to calm himself and failing. Cars whiz by beside him and the streets are awash with the din of partygoers laughing and shouting at each other. John doesn't hear any of it, deafened as he is by the rushing of blood through his veins and the words repeating themselves in his head.

She's right, you are an arsehole, he thinks. You deserved that.

It is past midnight and he is alone in London, with nowhere to go for the night now that Harry has kicked him out. Mum and Dad aren't expecting him back until next week, and he doesn't have enough cash with him for a train ticket anyway. He tells himself that he deserves it if he gets mugged, if he gets himself crowded into a corner and beaten to a pulp.

"Clara saw you," Harry had said when he had slipped back into the flat after a night out. Her voice was low and harsh, icy shards of glass waiting to be stepped on. "Clara was in the club tonight, and she saw you with that _boy_ ," she said, her tone turning mocking. "Was that _not right_ then? Tell me, John, why didn't you _try harder or something_?"

John had been rendered speechless, cringing at the shock of having his own hurtful words hurled back at him.

"I can't believe it! All this time, you were a goddamn faggot yourself!"

"I'm not a faggot!" John yells back, the words stirring up a familiar anger and spurring him to speak for the first time since walking into the room.

_"Look at that, he's a fucking queer after all, just like his sister!"_

"Oh, and now he's denying it," Harry sneers, twisting up the pretty features of her face.

"Harry, look -"

"No, you look! Where were you when Dad was fucking kicking me out of the house, hm? Oh that's right, convincing me to _keep quiet_ and _don't say anything_ because it's _unnatural_."

"Harry, that was two years a-"

"Fuck you, John," Harry swears, enunciating each word with emphasis and carefully-controlled outrage. "I don't ever want to see you again. Get the fuck out of my flat!"

Now John is walking down the darkened roads in his jeans and t-shirt, shivering now that the adrenaline has faded and the sweat soaking his shirt makes it stick to his body. The neon signs and the conversations drifting out of open pub doors no longer welcome him as they did earlier that night, instead only reminding him of how alone he is.

He remembers how close he and Harry used to be. Sure, Harry had her annoying habits. She had her easy confidence and her way of pulling all the attention in a room to herself, her little laugh whenever John came to her with problems at school. Even so, they were each other's only companions as they hopped from base to military base and school to new school. They were each other's confidantes and comrades-in-arms. They trusted each other implicitly and stood as a firm, unspoken alliance against whatever the world might throw at them.

It had changed when Harry was found snogging her girlfriend behind the school and their parents were horrified and enraged. For once in his life, John found himself no longer Harry's tagalong shadow, her quiet, unassuming little brother. Dad had looked to John as he stood with his back to the wall of their living room and demanded that he talk some sense into her.

Fourteen-year-old John, knowing only the jokes and jeers he was used to hearing day in and day out -- from the other boys, the men on base, the comedians and actors on the telly -- repeated the only things he knew how to say. And when Harry turned to him, her eyes wide and mouth open in that one vulnerable moment before hurt twisted itself into fury, he felt not so much regret, but a proud, ugly vindictiveness.

Up to that point, John had been jealous, he had been angry, insolent and unreasonable, but he had never known he could be cruel. That he could take a knife to a person he loved and sink it into their belly, smiling as their blood flowed like the old, dark hurts he never said aloud. It was for that moment of cruelty that John had offered to help Harry move, apologising with every step he took; it was for that moment that he sat through torturous dinners with his parents, trying bit by exhausting bit to change their minds; that he spent sleepless nights dismantling everything he knew about the world and himself and putting them back together again.

But it wasn't enough, of course. Things couldn't be undone, and words couldn't be unspoken. Things between he and Harry have never been the same after that, no matter how hard John tries. And he would never be able to forget what he now knows about himself, about the monster that he could be when he allows himself. Even his new relevation about his bisexuality was not as unsettling as that knowledge.

The thoughts turning in whirls and circles in his mind keep turning back to the same sentences: You're a terrible person. You don't deserve anything. And to think that John is hoping to become a doctor! Why would they want him? Surely the selection committee would take one look at him as he walks into the room and know what kind of person he really is. How can he be trusted with people who are sick and in need of care, when he is cruel to his own sister?

A car whizzes by beside him, the sudden noise and shine of headlights startling John as he realises that he has wandered too close to the edge of the sidewalk while lost in his thoughts. John finds that he has walked into what looks like an industrial district lined by old, crumbling warehouses, leaving the blaring music and jubilant crowds behind. The car is driving fast, much too fast for the speed limit, and John watches as its wheels crunch over something on the ground as it rushes away. An aluminum tin perhaps, an empty container someone threw away after enjoying their can of Coca-Cola, now crushed and condensed into a thin, flat slice.

John wonders what it is like to be underneath those unforgiving wheels, hearing the ribs crack in your own chest and feeling the alveoli in your lungs collapse in on themselves. Bones and flesh and cartilage, all compressed into one formless, unidentifiable lump. To be run over and forgotten, because you are useless and ugly and nobody walking down the street would stop to notice a worthless piece of rubbish.

The whistle of a tailpipe interrupts the distant white noise of the city centre as another car races down the empty street. John catches a flash of blinding headlights as he steps off the pavement.

 

John waits for the rush of impact, but it never comes. Instead, after the spots have cleared from his vision, he opens his eyes to a dim bedroom. The first thing he notices is that he is sitting on something hard and with a lot of corners. The next thing he sees is that the floor of the bedroom is strewn over with books, clothing, haphazard pieces of chemical equipment and what looks like a human skull. Sitting in the middle of this mess, perched on top of a bed dressed in light blue covers, is a boy who John instantly recognizes despite being several years older than he had last seen him. He is taller, and quite skinny now that he had lost the last of his baby fat. He has the knobby, slightly disjointed look of someone on the first few legs of his growth spurt and a few spatters of acne on his face.

The boy is looking at John with a vaguely amused expression curling into the edges of his mouth. "Oh, hello. I was starting to think that I had dreamt you up after all -- Mycroft certainly said so -- but apparently not."

John spends several seconds just staring. He had almost forgotten about the strange encounter with the boy in the garden, having dismissed it himself as a dream or a figment of his imagination.

"Who are you? Are you an angel?" John blurts out, then blushes as he realises that what he just said sounds like an incredibly corny pick-up line.

Sherlock just laughs. "Me, an angel? Really?"

John lets himself smile a little. "I suppose not. God can do better than a pimply teenager."

Sherlock scowls, comically scrunching his forehead and making the aforementioned pimples stand out even more. "Why did you do it, then?" he asks abruptly.

"What?"

"You. Why did you try to kill yourself?"

John reels back, shocked. "How did you know that?"

"I deduced it," Sherlock says with a hint of pride as he folds his arms in front of his chest. "You asked if I was an angel, which means you're either drunk out of your mind and trying to chat me up, or you just had a near-death experience. I'm going to go with the latter, yet you don't seem to be in very much shock for having almost died. That means you've been expecting it and you've accepted it. You're not suffering from an injury or so sick that you should be lying in a hospital bed, so the other option is suicide. Which fits with what you said last time you were here, too -- that you were feeling sad before you found yourself in my yard. I'm guessing you weren't just _feeling_ upset."

John stares at Sherlock, blinks as he tries to process everything the other boy just said. He feels like he should be offended, that he should be yelling at him and defending himself; instead, he is mostly impressed by Sherlock's train of logic.

"That's amazing," he breathes.

"Really?" Sherlock ask, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "I did just point out your suicidal inclinations. Aren't you supposed to punch me or something?"

"I might still do that later," John says, letting out a light chuckle, "so don't let your guard down just yet." Tentatively, Sherlock relaxes his frown and begins to mirror John's smile.

John stands up from where he is still crouching uncomfortably on a pile of knickknacks and picks his way over to sit on the bed, the only place in the room that is relatively clear. It is only as he draws closer to Sherlock, to where he is partially lit by the faint yellowish light of the bedside lamp, that he notices that one side of Sherlock's face is slightly reddish and swollen.

"Are you all right?" he asks, alarmed.

"What? Oh, this?" Sherlock shrugs as he notices the way John is looking at the wound. "It's fine."

"Who did it?" John demands, feeling a sudden rush of anger and protectiveness for this boy.

Sherlock scowls. "You don't need to baby me. I already have one annoying big brother."

"Right, sorry," John mumbles as he settles in at Sherlock's side, not knowing what to do with himself. The nagging, constantly dissatisfied part of him chastises himself for being useless.

"It was a couple boys at school."

"Sorry?" John looks up, jolted from his thoughts.

Sherlock heaves an impatient sigh. "You wanted to know who attacked me. It was some boys from school. But it's all right, they're idiots. Practically everyone is."

John looks up at this boy with his extraordinary inferences and quick eyes, at the stacks of academic journals and beakers littered around the room, and smiles.

"No, really, everyone's so _stupid_ ," Sherlock continues, heading into a diatribe about the inanities of the human race. John can't help but agree with and laugh at his observations and contemptuous comments.

"Do you think I'm an idiot too, then?"

"You're the biggest idiot of all," Sherlock says, but when he looks at John out the corner of his vision, his eyes are soft and there is a smile threatening to break through the sullen line of his lips.

They stay up talking late into the night, even after Sherlock's Mum calls to him to turn off the light and go to sleep. They sit, leaning side by side against Sherlock's headboard, murmuring while their eyes grow accustomed to the dark. Eventually, John tells Sherlock what happened with Harry.

"It doesn't matter what anyone else says," he whispers back. There is such quiet, defiant ferocity in his voice that John can't tell whose benefit he is saying it for.

 

John stands in the kitchen of his new flat. It is small, cold and empty -- and very lonely indeed.

It is his own fault, of course. He could still be in the warm, cosy flat he has lived in since graduation with Laurie, the one where they had celebrated birthdays and anniversaries and first paycheques. But he had woken up one day and realised that he could no longer pretend that he was happy with the simple domesticity and the path that is leading gradually but inexorably towards a pastel-themed wedding and a neatly-kept house in the suburbs. He had packed everything of his into cardboard boxes, in spite of everyone's dismayed counsels, and walked out the door, turning away so he didn't have to see the look of shocked betrayal on Laurie's face.

And now he is in his dingy new flat alone on a Friday night, feeling frustrated and unsatisfied with every decision he has ever made. It wasn't supposed to be like this. When he was growing up, hopping from town to town like an afterthought in his father's career, while the other children were looking into their futures and dreaming of adventures and impossible things, all John ever wanted was to stay still. He was going to be a doctor and save lives instead of taking them; he was going to find someone nice and settle down, to give his kids the life he never had. He had worked hard over the years for the perfect vision he had in his mind, but when they were finally in sight, all he could feel were the snares of a trap closing in around him, the quiet contentment suffocating him in its mundanity.

"Go enlist," his father, now retired and living in Cardiff, had told him when he learned of John's breakup. "They need doctors, and you'll do well in the military."

His father's endorsement made him balk at the idea. John had spent his entire adolescence trying to move as far away from his father's specter as possible, to shape himself into as different a man as he could be. He can't bear the idea that they may be more alike than he thought.

John wishes that he could choose who he wants to be, to choose what he wants, but he finds himself unable to control his own thoughts and emotions. He shivers, and wonders what kind of person he really is once the mask he has been wearing is finally removed. Over the years, there had been hints, here and there, that he is not as nice and well-tempered a person as he would like to be, but John had ruthlessly suppressed those parts of himself, refusing to let them take a firm hold.

The clinical light of the fluorescent tube on the kitchen ceiling catches the glint of a kitchen knife, and suddenly John is reminded of another day when his belongings sat in cardboard boxes in another room. He hadn't known what he was doing, that time. He had been captured by the image in his mind and had acted in the moment, without pausing to think about the implications. He isn't even sure if he meant to kill himself, or if he just wanted to see the rupture of skin and the rush of tightly-contained blood spurt like in the films his mother refused to let him watch. The second time, after his fight with Harry, he had known what he was doing, and now...

John swallows. He knows how to do it properly, now; he has done rotations in the A&E where patients were rushed in with a half blown-off face, and in pathology units where police asked for a confirmation of murder or suicide. For instance, he knows that the oft-romanticised slitting of wrists is ineffective and takes ages to bleed out. Instead, he thinks as he traces his veins with the sharp tip of the knife, a slice at the elbow is much more efficient.

John knows that if he goes through with this, he may just end up with Sherlock. He doesn't know why this happens to them, by what magic or force of nature the impossible occurs; as far as he knows, he hasn't heard of anything else like it. He doesn't know if this is something that will last for his entire life, or what would happen if he were to, say, be hit by a train. Does this mean that he can never die?

It doesn't matter. Either way, it will be interesting. A nice change of pace.

 

John opens his eyes to another tiny, darkened flat. The view out the window is familiar but from a different angle, telling him that he is still in London. He looks around himself and grins. He is standing in a small living room, and even though the floor is more or less clear, the rest of the flat is just as chaotic as Sherlock's childhood bedroom had been. And then there are the signature stacks of criminology journals, the distillation set on the kitchen table, and of course, the memorable human skull.

The lights are turned off where John is standing, and another door is half open with light flooding out of it. Despite the abysmal state of the flat, John feels a rush of warmth from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. More than anywhere he had lived growing up, more than his dorm room at university or the flat where he had spent the last four years, it feels like coming home. All at once and with conviction, John comes to understand a single fact, one that he has been ducking around for years: Sherlock Holmes is his soulmate. He belongs here, and tomorrow, he will come on his own two feet so that he will be able to _stay_.

Gingerly, taking care not to disturb any papers or what looks suspiciously like cell cultures, John makes his way to the door.

On the other side, a young man stands looking at a wall plastered with notes and maps and photographs. John's breath catches at the sight. The last time he had seen him, Sherlock was already starting to show the hints of an atypical attractiveness, but John still saw him as a strange, gangly kid. Now, at twenty-four, Sherlock is breathtaking. The floor lamp lights up his profile, from the alluringly messy curls down along the slim body encased in a button-down and dark jeans. His arms emerge from where he has rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and John can see that despite his skinny figure, Sherlock is definitely no breakable twig.

Sherlock notices his presence then, and frankly, John is surprised that he hadn't known the moment he appeared in the other room. He turns to look at John and grins widely.

"John!" he exclaims, "I'm glad to see you! Well, not so glad with regards to the method of your arrival, but still," he shrugs carelessly.

"Hello," John says, smiling.

A few steps take Sherlock right up into John's space, and John has to tilt his head upwards to look at Sherlock's face. Sherlock takes his right arm in one of his hands and rubs his thumb at the crease of his elbow, his touch burning into John's skin.

"You don't need to do this to see me, you know," he whispers in a lilting tone of voice that sets John's heart pounding.

"And why would I want to see you?" John teases softly.

"Oh, I don't know," Sherlock breathes, crowding in closer than before and tilting his head downwards so that John can feel his every exhale on his cheeks. Sherlock's body is warm as he folds himself around John, his rabbit-fast pulse visible in his carotid artery as he bends down to kiss him.

John frees his arms from his sides to curl them around Sherlock, pulling him in and aligning their hips. The world turns liquid as the moments melt together. All other thoughts fall away except for the touch and scent and sight of Sherlock as John pulls open his already-straining shirt and presses lips and teeth to his neck. Sherlock tugs at John's shirt and he hurries to divest it, aching to feel Sherlock's chest against his own bare skin.

That's when he sees it, and suddenly all the soarings emotions and sensations crash down around him. There, on a low table in the corner of the room, are a syringe and a vial of solution. He pushes Sherlock away and walks dizzily towards the objects. The vial has no label, but John doesn't need one to know what it contains. Stupid, stupid, how could he have not seen it right away? Exuberant speech, hyperexcitability. Dilated pupils, increased body temperature and elevated heart rate. Who was he kidding, to think that it was all a reaction to seeing him? The classic acute effects of cocaine use, right in front of him-- and he calls himself a doctor.

"John?"

He turns around to see Sherlock hovering uncertainly a few steps away. Suddenly, the constant, suppressed frustration he has been carrying with him for weeks explodes.

"Really? You?" he shouts. He is still gripping the vial tightly in one hand, and he hurls it across the room uncaring of what it hits. The smash of glass as it lands is extremely satisfying.

"John, I--"

"Shut up! Shut up, you arsehole! Do you know what this does to you? You should know better. You, of all people!"

Ignoring Sherlock's devastated expression, John grabs his shirt and storms out, making sure to slam the door to the flat as he leaves. He doesn't have a jacket and the night air is cold where the wind blows through his thin t-shirt, but he can barely feel it with the hot burst of his fury. He wanders the streets of London all night, neither knowing nor caring where he is headed, until finally his vision blurs and he finds himself back at his own silent flat.

 

The next morning, John wakes up with his anger dulled but still sparking resiliently inside his chest. He knows where Sherlock lives now and thinks about dropping by to at least make sure he is all right. After all, Sherlock had always been there when he needed someone. But the stubborn, enraged part of him refuses to give in. It rears its head at the sense of betrayal, even though logically, John knows that he has no reason for feeling that way. Disappointed and dismayed, yes, but not betrayed. Even still, every time John thinks about making his way to Montague Street, a voice whispers in his head: _you don't need to apologise, you were right to be angry._

Instead, John searches up the location of the nearest recruitment centre.

 

John is soon forced to come to terms with the fact that he is well-suited for the military, after all. The work is fulfilling and the constant possibility of action hangs over the days so that even everyday tasks hold an added edge. Even during the uneventful periods, the camaraderie of the other men and women gives him an automatic sense of belonging. He enjoys his time in the army and re-enlists when the time comes, and if there is a small nagging guilt that wriggles its way into his mind every once in a while, he does his best to ignore it.

John is good at his job and, just like his father predicted, he does well in the military. That is, right up until he gets shot. For one moment, as he lays on the ground and stares at the clear blue sky stretching up high above, John wonders if he will wake up to Sherlock sighing exasperatedly over him, but when he next opens his eyes, he is surrounded by the efficient, clean lines of a military hospital.

The infection in his shoulder flares up and doesn't go away. John drifts in and out of a pained consciousness and when he is next alert enough to hold a proper conversation, he is told that he is being sent home.

Just like it had before he enlisted, the days now stretch out blank and unending in front of him. His mother has passed away, but his father visits him as he recuperates in hospital. Their conversation is even more stilted than usual, and awkward silences reign. When John moves into his tiny lifeless bedsit, he doesn't try to contact his father. Harry forces her way into his life every few weeks, chattering on like she always does, and it is now a thousand times more irritating than it has ever been. The shadow of broken promises that she brings with her pulls the old ghost of his guilt to the forefront, which now haunts him more than ever during the dull, colourless days.

More than once, John holds the gun he has obtained from an old army acquaintance and stares down the darkness of its barrel. He doesn't fire. He doesn't know what scares him more: the possibility that he might find himself in the company of a familiar dark-haired figure, or the possibility that he might not.

 

In the end, when John finally meets Sherlock again, it is purely coincidental and completely unexpected. Mike Stamford is adamant in introducing John to his acquaintance, and John can't think of a proper reason to say no. John has spent the past few years avoiding the thought of Sherlock and he doesn't know what he was expecting to happen if they saw each other again, but it definitely isn't this. Awkwardness perhaps, or even coldness or anger on Sherlock's part, but certainly not this casual invitation to share a flat.

John gets caught up in the case and ends up moving into the upstairs bedroom that very night. Neither of them speak of their previous meetings or the things they know about each others' pasts. In fact, living with Sherlock is a study in things that John cannot say.

When Lestrade and his team ransack the flat in a "drugs bust", Sherlock insists loudly to the policemen that he is clean. In the split second after the words leave his lips, he turns to look around the room and his eyes meet John's.

"I know, I believe you," John wants to say. "I'm sorry. I should have been there, when you were torn up and shivering, struggling through the withdrawal. I should have been there for you, all those times when you needed someone."

But the flat is crawling with police, already poking their unwanted noses into Sherlock's life.

"Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side," Sherlock murmurs as he lifts his head from where it rests on his violin, the day after he cracks the code on Irene's phone.

John sits numbly in his armchair, listening to the depth of the music flowing from Sherlock's fingers, so at odds with his words. "Am I a chemical defect?" John wants to ask, but he isn't sure if he wants to hear the answer.

Sherlock sits shaking in the lounge of the Crossed Keys, his normally impenetrable shield breaking down before John's eyes. "There is nothing wrong with me!" he insists much too loudly, and John wants to take his hands and grip them tightly in his own until the trembling subsides.

"I know," he wants to tell him, "It's okay. No matter what happens, I will still believe in you." But he doesn't know how to get the words past his lips, how to say them in a way that Sherlock will accept, to convey to him all that he means by them. When Sherlock lashes out at him, he leaves, not knowing what else to do.

And most of all, John wants to tell Sherlock that he loves him. In the mornings when he is making snide remarks over an article in the newspaper, after the adrenaline rushes when they have just accosted another criminal. After Moriarty leaves them shaking and stunned by the swimming pool and, most importantly, while Sherlock stands on the roof of St. Bart's Hospital as John looks on, trying to find the words that will change his mind and being terrified of speaking the wrong ones. Later, he will wonder if Sherlock would still be alive if he had said all the things he wanted to.

Standing there helplessly in the parking lot, reality seems to slip away from him as he watches Sherlock flail through the air and hears the loud thud of his landing. His vision blurs before him and he feels like he is trying to move through jelly. Any moment now, he thinks, he will wake to find that it is all a horrible, horrible dream. This can't be real -- it simply can't be, he forbids it to be so.

It isn't until afterwards, sitting alone in the too-silent flat with the remnants of Sherlock's experiments decomposing around him, that he wonders what it means that Sherlock wasn't transported to him when he hit the ground. Is it because he was already in John's presence? Had the connection ever only been one way -- how many times had Sherlock needed him before, and he didn't know? Was the link broken off after John had turned his back on it, while he was off gallivanting in the desert? And lastly, was it possible that Sherlock is still alive, that it is all part of an elaborate plot of his?

John tries his best not to dwell on the possibilities, knowing that it will only drive him mad. Instead, he moves into a smaller flat in another part of the city, gets a job and tries to make the most of his life. He still has his gun, but he keeps it tightly locked up in a box at the bottom of his closet. In a way, his entire life is a gift from Sherlock, and he won't toss it lightly aside.

 

One night eighteen months later, John wakes up in the middle of the night from a crashing sound. The room is dark, but John is instantly aware that there is someone else in it. He curses the fact that he no longer keeps his gun in his bedside table like he used to.

Then, a keening sound escapes from the silhouette at the opposite wall and even though he sounds nothing like himself, John knows exactly who it is.

"Sh-Sherlock?" he asks, choking on the name as he turns on the lamp beside his bed.

"John," Sherlock rasps, his voice wavering and rough as gravel. He is collapsed against the wall, shaking violently and breathing rapidly through his parted mouth. He is wearing a raggedy t-shirt and tearing khakis, his hair sticking out haphazardly in every direction.

Alarmed, John scrambles to kneel in front of his frantic friend.

"Sherlock, what happened?" he asks as gently as he can and reaches out to set a hand on his shoulder. John's breath catches painfully at the way Sherlock flinches at the touch.

"The blood. I can't get it off, it won't go away!" the words tumble clumsily out of Sherlock as he shoves his clean hands at John. He looks up, and his eyes are wild and panicked, his pupils darting back and forth as if he isn't entirely seeing what is in front of him.

"Oh, Sherlock," John whispers, his voice cracking. The words and reactions are all too familiar from his patients in the military and the panicking, regretful culprits he and Sherlock have encountered.

"Shh, John, don't worry. They can't hurt you now. I killed him; I killed them all." Despite his obviously disturbed state, the look in Sherlock's eyes is determined and proud.

Tears blur John's vision, and he pays them no mind as they slip from his eyes. He takes the hands that Sherlock is still holding out to him. Sherlock is practically vibrating, and John rubs slow, smooth circles into his palms. He lifts them to his lips and softly kisses each fingertip, every line and every knuckle, until the hysterical energy slows seeps from Sherlock's body, leaving him collapsed limply against John. He brings his arms around the other man and raises a hand to stroke through Sherlock's unwashed hair.

"Where are you right now? Can you come home?"

He feels Sherlock's nod where his head is tucked under John's chin.

"Then come back to me. I will wait for you. I will always be here. We'll get through this together. Promise me you'll come home."

"Yes," Sherlock whispers into his shoulder, his arms tightening around John's waist.

 

The next morning, John is awakened by a knock on the door of his flat.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Canada:**  
>  Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868  
> Post-Secondary Student Helpline (Ontario): 1-866-925-5454  
> Crisis: 911
> 
>  **USA:**  
>  Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
> 
>  **UK:**  
>  Samaritans: 08457 90 90 90  
> Childline: 0800 1111  
> PAPYRUS (for teenagers & young adults): 0800 068 41 41
> 
>  **Australia:**  
>  Lifeline: 13 11 14
> 
> If you think you might need it, please have these numbers saved on your phone, just in case.


End file.
